Poetry of the People – Marv Ward

This week's Poet of the People is Marv Ward. Marv has three books of poetry, but is best known as a blues musician in the Piedmont tradition. I first talked with Marv at the old Utopia Bar. He was sitting at the bar killing a drink and started regaling me with stories of carousing and playing music. Years later, I had the privilege to write the introduction for his first book of poetry. Since Marv has retired and settled down, he is more often seen sipping his favorite caffeine beverage, but still enjoys regaling folks with his stories about playing music up and down the east coast in every venue and gin joint that enjoys good live music.

Complacency

Complacency
      is the end point of existence.
The fear of change holds us in a death grip,
and prevents evolution and growth.
     Only when we step out of line,
           alter the norm,
               or challenge the expected,
     can we find true fulfillment.
Life needs nourishment.
     Stagnation kills the soul.
           Dreams can only become reality through action.
Why dream if complacency is your mantra.
     Live life,
and relish the probability of your dreams.

LAST TRAIN LEAVING

When the probability of departure
      changes from if to when,
          the perspective of the excursion

leaves little hope,
     for a change of destination.
Once the Conductor
     has punched your ticket,
your only resolve,
     is to pray,
          for a smooth journey.
It’s best to leave your baggage,
     at the station.
No round trip fares are accepted,
     and being unencumbered
          will make the ride more peaceful.

LONESOME WHISTLE

The mournful bellow of a freight locomotive
singing through the silence of the dawn,
reminds me
that I still live in the South.
And as I roll in my bed,
I can hear the echoes of
Jimmy Rogers’ and Hank Williams’
anthems in my head
and I rest easy in the company
of compadres who have eulogized that haunting symphony.

PURPOSE

A question I wrestle with is the enigma of purpose.
Often, late at night,
while lying in my bed, before I fall into Morpheus’s arms,
my soul twitches with doubt.
Do I have one?
Have I or will I ever fulfill mine?
Is it real, or just a manifestation of human frailty and guilt?
If we have a “purpose”
are we meant to know it?
Or are we just pawns in some ethereal game,
used to obtain an objective,
then sacrificed to advance the celestial strategy?
Being sentient and reasoning beings,
I must believe our existence means more than propagating the species,
perhaps our continuation has more to do with species evolution than proclivity.
But we seem to continue to produce an abundance of lost souls.
Lingering uncertainty propels our lives,
the search for an answer, is our driving force.
We invent religions to satisfy our misgivings
and dogma to ensure our trepidations have cause,
but faith is merely “the blind leading the blind”.
Some have developed a manic obsession with “finding my purpose”
as if it were a child who had wandered away at the fair that we must meet at the “rocket”
to regain our mental stability, but no one knows where “the rocket” is.
Philosophers and gurus avow that just “being” is the sole essence of living
and there is no other impetus to the daily grind.
So why does my soul keep twitching through the night and filling my dreams with despair.
Even when I am “here now” I am constantly musing my predicaments.
Perhaps purpose is its own destination, you can’t get there from here, but you are already there.
I don’t know if I will ever have an answer, no realization is forthcoming
and I am starting to call the constant twitching a “dance”.

Ward’s Bio

Blues and Americana singer, songwriter, guitarist and poet "Reverend" Marv Ward has performed throughout the United States and shared the stage with some of the most well-known artists in music today. The Rev. has played his original and visionary blues stylings in venues all over the country and has shared stages with music legends such as Aerosmith, Joan Baez, The Vanilla Fudge, Dave Van Ronk, Paul Geremia, Maria Muldaur, Nappy Brown, John Hammond, Steve Goodman, Bob Margolin, Big Bill Morganfield, Mac Arnold, Mooky Brill and many more. Listed in An Encyclopedia of South Carolina Jazz and Blues Musicians, Ward writes poetry with the same passion that he composes his songs. He has three collections of poetry “One Lone Minstrel, “Healing Time,” and his latest “Bar Stool Poet”, to go along with his six published solo CD’s. A native of Lorton, Virginia, Ward lives in Columbia, South Carolina. He previously served in the United States Naval Reserve and has worked in broadcast and educational television throughout North and South Carolina. At age 76“, The Rev.” is still going strong performing with local ensembles “Wallstreet and The Blues Brokers,” Jelly Roll and Delicious Dish,” and occasionally with the “Shrimp City Allstars” and still writing. A holiday CD and perhaps a fourth book are in the works.

Poetry of the People – Glenda Bailey-Mershon

This week's Poet of the People is Glenda Bailey-Mershon. I have known Glenda for only a year or two after she moved back to her home state. She is gifted poet and prose writer and gives back to the literary community with kindness and a wealth of expertise.

IN THE PHOTOGRAPH SHE LIFTS HER HANDS

unpinning long hair. Chestnut, I knew only because relatives said her hair and my sister's were the same. 

In sepia, her gesture asks to be admired. And who could not admire the luminous eyes of youth, the sensuous mouth, the heavy hair about to fall?

Yet her eyes say she is puzzled, unfamiliar with the procedure. Innocent as a fawn in sudden light.

What I remember is her stiff hands spinning, yarn spilling from pointed fingers, her sharp tongue calling down our rising spirits.

And yet the photograph . . .

Youthful beauty surprised by life.

Grandmother?

A “GYPSY” (ROMA!) POET WALKS INTO A COFFEESHOP

The audience gapes. What’s this woman doing,

singing when she should be droning poetry?

I warble about having rhythm. No one knows

that’s Manouche swing. It’s what they asked

when I booked: Tell what inspires you.

 

Everything’s a song, I say, letting loose again, whether dirge or dance or ballad beat.

I snap fingers, swish my skirt.

The woman at the first coffeeshop table

has stopped knitting, pokes her husband

who looks up from his golf score, sees

 

I am about to show them how once

I skatted a whole poem because I wanted

to say, we Roma are here, most of us 

are mixed, some got Africa in our bones,

Spain in our step, French lilac scent

 

beneath our nails and under our skin.

Farther away, the pulse of Rajasthan.

And if I really want to confound, I’ll say

we married Persian tanbur and chang,

Turkish oud, Greek lyres and Parisian

 

accordions, then swung it all on a reed with dancing keys, but I know

I only need say Django, and they will sit up. Guitars are what Americans fancy. Now

I have to bring them down to hear enjambed

 

lines, marching stanzas. Somehow they get it, smile, clap their hands to the rhythm when asked. Yet when I finish and take my turn for the proffered drink at the bar, people stare and point their chins, say “Gypsy.” That’s all they need to know. 

 

I sashay my way out of the shop, smile.

They will be pulsing in their beds tonight.

 

AN INCANTATION FOR MY GRANDMOTHERS

Corn mother

Earth heavy

Great Raw Woman

What you must have been in childbed! 

Birthing with the force of two hundred hurricanes, crouching low, arching high, pushing out

squalling life and catching it in two fiery, rough hands.

Rocking, rocking, face like the moon over ravaged land.

 

Each day, I see you, 

rivulets of water running out of your body  across scorched fields,

over red clay front yards singing orange zinnias.

 

Your daughters, we are feathers tossed by angry winds,

falling lightly

half a continent away.

 

Quiet strangers riding fierce city rails,

stepping unseen through snow-hushed streets,

dancing to rain drumming on roofs,

greeting the sun in glowing glass.

  

Watching the moon rise in canyons of steel,

we find your image in junkyard windows,

in our own eyes, mirrored

under fluorescent lights. 

 

We quick-step down long alleys,

flame incense in silent rooms,

fathom the earth beneath asphalt and brick, 

recognize its rhythms beneath the thrum of cars.

 

Even city towers gleam with your life.

Skyscrapers spark starlight in the eyes of the Ancient Ones.

Lesson

Daughter, this is your womb. She put her warm hand on the child's belly and drew the outline of a cave.

 

Out of this cavity you will draw that which is most precious to you.

Into this space

you will draw that which is mysterious, unknowable. She drew a line from  the womb to the heart.

 

This is the straightest of lines.

 

Do you understand?

 

BACK WHEN I WAS JUICY

Back when I was juicy I pried the lid off morning, knifed from my bed, onto cold floor boards, scattered pennies enough for coffee in the café,  or a luscious scrum of chocolat on a cold Sartre afternoon. 

 

Virgin among molded tomes,  I, willing wand of destiny, jumped to conclusions about infinity while frat guys in the booth behind bet on the constants of integration.

 

Down the long green moments I strode, confident, to and from  class, shouldering book bags,  tippling volumes from overhead shelves,  palming change like bribes for fortunes, assured of redemption in the hands of destiny.

 

Every Saturday, I rambled bookstore to bookstore among other explorers,  seeking keys to unlock furtive encounters behind mothers’ cast-off lace curtains.

 

Jampot oozing thick syrup seeds, I melted into one after another armored knight. Later, we read each other  tales we could not fathom back when I was juicy.

UNORTHODOX RHYME

Preachers tease us with heaven’s riches  Make us choose: wives or whores  Warn us, we’re too big for our britches 

Then forbid abortion, divorce

 

Warn us we're too big for our britches 

Want us to scratch all their itches 

Then forbid abortion, divorce 

Good men writhe with remorse

 

Want us to scratch all their itches 

Scratch our own, they call us witches  Good men writhe with remorse

Veils conceal life’s source

 

Scratch our own, they call us witches  Force us to choose: wives or whores 

Veils conceal life’s source  Camels pass by your riches.

 

NOTE: This poem is dedicated to the South Carolina Legislature, who apparently think their religious beliefs should control all women’s health care.

BIO:

Glenda Mariah Bailey-Mershon is an American poet, essayist, novelist, cultural historian, and human rights activist. Born in Upstate South Carolina to a family with roots in the Southern Appalachians, she has explored in poetry and fiction her European, Native American, and Romani heritage. Her published works include the novel, Eve's Garden, a family saga of three generations of Romani-American women; the full-length poetry collection, Weaver’s Knot, an exploration of millworker communities ; Bird Talk: Poems; saconige/blue smoke: Poems from the Southern Appalachians, which plumbs the ties between European and Cherokee cultures in the mountains; A History of the American Women's Movement: A Study Guide, and four volumes as editor of the Jane's Stories anthologies by women writers, including Jane's Stories IV: Bridges and Borders, which includes work by women in conflicts around the world.

Glenda has been a finalist in Our Stories fiction contest; featured author at the Illinois Book Fair, the Other Words conference; and the St. Augustine PoetFest. For the 2024 Associated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) national conference, she chaired a panel entitled “Toward a Romani Women’s Canon.”

She is a former bookstore and small press owner, and has taught women's studies, writing, anthropology, and political science. She is the originator of the Jane's Stories anthologies and Jane’s Stories Press Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that offers the Clara Johnson Prize in Women’s Literature. As a tutor, she helps young people achieve their GED degrees and learn strong conversation skills in English.

Poetry of the People – Bugsy Calhoun

This week's Poet of the People is Bugsy Calhoun. Bugsy has been a fixture of the spoken word community performing throughout South Carolina and surrounding  states. Coming out of the COVID lockdown he pivoted his focus and is now the leading organizer and advocate for spoken word poets in the Midlands. The spoken word community has become a force with events almost every night of  the week. Poetry in the Midlands is indebted to Bugsy Calhoun and I am honored to call him my friend.

Poem1

Dear momma I still call your number knowing you won't answer what would I say if you did answer I would tell you that I'm ok even though most times I'm not I would confess that I failed as husband like my father but above all things I'm doing my best to be a good dad I did what you said started over from the ground up my time on earth has been a Testament to your teaching since you been gone how I wish I was there holding your hand whipping your tears away before you finally let go to be with God I wouldn't tell you about all the pain I've been in physically and mentally but I know you would hear it all in my voice because you my mother my Queen who knew everything about me before I knew it myself you had the cheat code to my thoughts and ideas Spiritually you with me the most time I feel like a motherless child holding onto memories Google mapping the house I was raised in wishing I can scream your name can throw the key down let me in I will probably never visit your grave site because I pay my respects to you Myra Dee Dee And Ra Ra when I set foot on Bergen Street if I'm lucky I go to the house and breath in my heritage allow the Nostalgia to wrap his arms around me like a warm blanket I close my eyes and hear your voice like my conscience never will I forget you as long as blood flow in my veins looking in the mirror I see you looking back at me sometimes I remember the echoes of encouragements of you reminding me your Umi your son to how to stand a be a man in this cruel world the Queen in you has birth the King in me I'm forever grateful for you love it will reside in me for as long as I live no longer living in blue sky's that's now turn grey since you been gone

Poem2

This is about the sacrifice and the struggle
Black Wall Street being reborn on the backs of black business owners of today
 reclaiming our reparations like reconstruction
 this is about bold beautiful sisters who refuse to work for somebody's nine-to-five
 but for themselves they will work 25 8 taking this time in there life to dedicate something that they can leave as a legacy for oncoming Generations
this is for the brothers that bond together to build generational wealth by lifting each other up by their own bootstraps never looking for a handout but ready to hand out what is necessary for us to stand on our own two feet
 no this isn't big business
 this is Mom and Pops
 beauty salon an barber shops and restaurants
that make food for our souls visionaries who made something out of nothing never taking nothing for granted
To be brave enough to say to world im am here
 and I have something you want to give change after service is rendered with a smile to share conversation ideas and gratitude with strangers that become your friends and neighbors over time
 to become a staple in your community overtime
 to know what you are doing is bigger than you
to truly embrace being a boss
Business Organizer Scheduling System
Brothers of the Same Struggle
Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency
 to stand by it and guarantee it
This Is Black business

Poem3

It takes a special kind of ugly to beat the beautiful out of you to belittle your very existence to berate you with a bunch you insults viciously verbal bombarding you with derogatory descriptions to transform a mahogany brown into blacks and Blues beat you with in a inch of your life in love to call for God and no one answers mac can't make up the excuse for his anger to contemplate dying in your sleep than living awake in a nightmare to sleep with the enemy to justify his actions to question your self maybe it was me or something I said to lye in bed going over all the lies he said to be trapped in the prison of askaban the cracked walls don't feel pain like I do crack ribs remind me every time I breath what this kind of love feels like butterflies in my stomach have morphed into crows that circle over my head I'm scared to see tomorrow I try to hold on to memories a love story that
 now turned into a horror flick hoping things will get better not ready to grab the life preserver from saviors nor listen to advice or prayers because they don't him like I do to put band aids of our good times over fresh bruises has become a new chapter in our walk together it took me losing my eye site to see that he wasn't the one for me even Scooby do showed the monsters hide behind mask to realise that wolves in sheeps clothing are not only found in fairytales

Poem4

Mothers and tired of black children being made into Martyrs from unjust murders we have been Willie Lynch since we were captured from the shores of Africa white hoods have been traded for black and blue police uniforms made it legal to hunt men like me because Justice is blind Thirteenth Amendment and the industrial Prison Complex is the new slave trade mandatory drug sentences equal genocide for people with melanin murdered by cops equal admin leave the benefits and pensions niggars have no color no conscience or code of conduct for every black person killed on camera there were 20 more who will never get named or a hashtag or there last words made into catch phrases to be sold on t-shirts we have been spinning our wheels for too long murder hashtag protest no conviction riot repeat Officer Jim Crow applied Chokehold and segregated the life out of his black body the color of his skin pose the threat hands up don't shoot threat I can't breathe threat he was wearing a hoodie threat in the confines of my own home threat we got Soldiers with no leaders they'll show you better than they can tell you what happens to our leaders any man that tried to force change has been made a Mater by America's bastard children I am fortunate to survive my lynchings scared and afraid of those who supposed to Serve and Protect today there's too much talk with no actions tired of Facebook and Twitter rants social media activist being called a Nigger don't make me one unplug and wake up from the Matrix red and blue pill resemble every police lights in the distance agent Smith Reminds Me of every racist cop in existence I'm afraid for my son his mother my daughter and lastly myself speeches and poems don't make you an activist action in your community does athletes are willing to speak on Kaepernick taking a knee but won't take a stand themselves the president called them filled niggars play ball it is the only time that we can run and not get killed for it we are sick and tired of being sick and tired they are no riots without reasons protest reform and Revolt and are the seeds of revolution see the hate that is made is the hate that you gave there will be no change until we change freedom from mental slavery breaking the chains I pray we can find a resolution From the Ashes of the flames

Poem5

I dedicate these words to my father and to those with the courage to help where help is needed for those fighting the good fight we won't lay down and die we will keep on living through the support of loved ones and Samaritans who know about service and sacrifice may you find the strength to endure to live a life of longevity finding your second chance to Salvation somewhere between holistic and Hallelujah together through tolerance we can transform the treatment of transgender individuals teaching there is a better way because this disease does not discriminate race religion Creed color identification or orientation to those who find themselves hopeless or homeless may you find refuge in these words remember to rise every day to reclaim your respect with resounding resilience and accept that death is not in your diagnosis may you find a fulfilling life on your journey Embrace every day as it comes remember the reward and living your best life stay uplifted when ugly actions and words draped in ignorance and rejection find you with quil I quilted scripted stitchings of words giving by infected and affected projecting that through love knowledge wisdom understanding education perseverance empathy and compassion we can eradicate the stigma of those who live with HIV and AIDS and come together to understand that it's your dignity not your diagnosis that defines you

Poem 6

This poem will not be superficial
This poem will recognize that reparations are pass due
This poem will be acknowledgment that the sacrifice of our ancestors is present in our present generation
This will feel like Gil Scott-Heron giving honor to Maya Angelo
Fueled by the Passion of James Baldwin
An ode to Madame Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni and Paul Laurence Dunbar
This poem will be a freedom song
A new Negro spiritual
We will lift every voice and sing
This poem is the realization that free at last is still a dream by Dr. King
It's knowing that trouble won't last always but joy will come in the morning
To understand that black is beautiful, black is strong, black is powerful, black is resilient
Black is survival by any means necessary
Remember we were kings and queens
Before the slave trade and middle passage segregation and Jim Crow, Black Wall Street and Tuskegee Experiments
Cause we be making something from nothing
We be feeding our families with the leftovers of our oppressors
We be innovation black inventions H.B.C.U. black education, black girl magic, refined minds divine nine
We are the culture that you wish you was
The style you pattern yourself after
We are Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, Jim Brown
Maya Rudolph, Phillis Wheatley, Mary McLeod Bethune
Fred Shuttlesworth, JamesBevel, Stokely Carlmicheal Ralph David Abernathy, Jessie Jackson, Andrew Young, Bayard Rustin,
Miles Davis, John Coletrain, Thelonious Monk & Donald Bird
We are love supreme and a dream deferred
We are first black president serving two terms
This poem is confirmation that black lives matter
Black is the origin that birth nations after
It's I self-love and master
Knowledge wisdom and understanding
That there's magic in your Melanin
The reflection of God in every man
We are more than we shall overcome
Our existence is the testament to everything we overcome
We're more than any month, more than any color, more than any Name

Bio

(Bugsy Calhoun) Jamal Washington a poet emcee born and raised in the OceanHill Brownsville section of Brooklyn NY, Debuted his poetry at the Brooklyn Moon. He is founding member of the Unusual Suspects poetry Troop and member of Black on Black Rhyme and the slam master of Columbia's slam team Tribe Slam he Co-hosts an open mic at The House of Hathor called the J.A.M. Session with his wife (Wintah Storm) Karen Joyner Washington he also has 6 spoken word and hip hop music projects on www.Bandcamp.com/bugsycalhoun Bugsy works in the community using his poetry to build Bridges not barriers he works with Tracy Oakman who runs the Princes Empowerment and Boyz II Men infused mentoring program.

To understand the rhythm and flow of Bugsy's poetry it is best heard live and I encourage you to step outside of your comfort zone and listen to our spoken word poets in their element.

Poet of the People – Susan Finch Stevens

This week's Poet of the People is Susan Finch Stevens. I first met Susan when Kwami Dawes resided in South Carolina and ran the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. She is a gifted poet and generous with her time and energy. 

Her leadership as president of the Poet Society of South Carolina drew me back into the organization when I was disillusioned with its leadership and direction. Susan Finch Stevens is one of the gracious, kind and skillful poets that the Carolina coast is known for.

Just Sayin’

with a nod to William Carlos Williams
 
I forget eggs boiling on the stove
when scores of cedar waxwings
begin their yearly ravishing
of hollies out front. I know full well
by midday all berries will be gone,
plucked from the evergreens
like last December’s ornaments
once the new year rolled around.
Tomorrow I’ll miss the yaupon’s
red adornments, the dahoon’s
crimson spangle, but today I delight
in gluttony, the riotous ecstasy
of waxwings more akin to Bacchus
than Icarus. I envy the drunken
throng’s frenzy as they plump
their bellies full, their habit
of choosing the tipsy dizziness
of overripe fruit over the dizziness
of attaining new and solitary heights.
Today I relish the marauders’ trills,
the sleek beauty of their black masks,
and the waxy red tips of their wings.
I take delight in tails edged with a yellow
somewhere between the sun’s bright heat
and the dull yolks of the overcooked eggs,
which I will discard this once without remorse.
I ask no one for forgiveness
when I take instead from the fridge
the bright berries I suddenly crave.
They are delicious, so sweet and so cold.
 

Sea-girls

Maybe the dark cursor of a boat moving
            along the horizon at the bottom
                        of the sky’s bright screen
            has caught the attention of two girls
heart-deep in the Caribbean Sea.
            Or perhaps they see frigate birds
                        at long last returning to land.
            From my dry vantage point
with these old eyes,
            I see nothing beyond the pair
                        but unfathomable shades of blue. 
            A rogue wave sends the two reeling,
heads thrown back in raucous laughter
            drowned from my hearing
                        by the salt-white noise of the sea.
            Footing regained, they link arms,
each to each, to brace themselves
            against another rush of water
                        clear enough for them to see
            the shell-pink of their summer pedicures.
Clear enough for me to see legs and feet changed now
            into sea tentacles by the smoke and mirrors
                        of water and light.
 

Apples for Athena

for Hope
 
Athena desired the golden apple
meant for the fairest goddess of all,
but Paris gave Aphrodite the prize
in exchange for the hand of Helen
whose face would launch a thousand ships
and lead to a horse of wood and deceit.
But enough about that!
I don’t mean to tell you today
about that apple or that horse.
I don’t mean to tell you today
about that Athena, but about
the Athena here in this barn
where I’ve brought my granddaughter
and her offering of apples.
This Athena would surely shun
the golden one, preferring instead
the succulent fruit to which she now
lowers her head. The mare works
her long jaws, rolling an apple
from side to side until a crunch
sweetens her mouth and even her breath,
which is already sweet with the ghost of hay.
I know this because I am standing here
close enough to feel the warmth emerge
from her enormous lungs.
They are as big as angel wings.
No, wrong mythology.
They are as big as aeon wings
or the wings of Nike, goddess of victory, 
who was close enough to that other Athena
for the two to become, in the minds
of many, melded into a single deity.
Just as this Athena, who now takes
a silver snaffle into her mouth,
becomes one with my granddaughter
Hope, mounted and ready to gallop—
if not to Mount Olympus, at least
to her own version of paradise.                

Scoliosis

My shadow stretches impossibly long and straight across my childhood
yard in the slant of late day sun. I am tiny and mighty with my towel cape
and that dark immensity emanating from my small feet. My shadow
is formidable, but
already my spine
is curving, refusing
its stature, pulling one
shoulder to hip, a body part-
ly bent on being closer to
the sticker-spiked ground,
a tension of opposites
embodied as I grow
taller and shorter
at once.

Death’s Door

Four catbirds in as many days
propel themselves full force
into the clear deception
of our front door’s glass pane.
Shadow-grey, darker skullcaps,
the birds arrive at the threshold
as though dressed in self-mourning.
One by one, I bury them in the yard
amidst the remains of hamsters and fish
and other small creatures who have died
in this place where we live. The dogs
are elsewhere. The dachshund’s bones
well settled beneath oaks in a beloved
country spot, his tombstone the arc
of his half-buried dish. The mutt’s
divided ashes scattered there in part
and also a stone’s throw away
in the plaid currents of a brackish creek.
The cremated spaniels, who never met
in life, wait patiently in death to be
unleashed together on the beach
where they both romped.
The Weimaraner, ash-grey in life,
joins me in this new ritual of burying birds.
By the third day, the dog knows the routine
and noses a covering of dirt and dead
leaves onto the lifeless form I drop
into the ground’s yawning furrow.
I hang an ornament on the door,
not in mourning, but in hope of exposing
the skulduggery of autumn light and glass.
But on the fourth day,
the dreaded thud once more.
That night we talk of the birds
but avoid all mention of omens.
Instead we speak of what we could buy:
perhaps a solid door to block all light
and reflection as though we might
put an end to this grave trickery.

BIO:

Susan Finch Stevens’ poems have appeared in journals and anthologies, including Connecticut River Review, One, Kakalak, and The Southern Poetry Anthology: South Carolina. Her chapbook Lettered Bones was selected as a winner in the South Carolina Poetry Initiative Chapbook Competition. She is a past president of the Poetry Society of South Carolina and served many years as the society’s recording secretary. She has been a featured reader in Piccolo Spoleto’s Sundown Poetry Reading Series, both individually and as a member of Richard Garcia’s Long Table Poets. She served as poet-in-residence at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Susan lives on the Isle of Palms, SC with her husband David and their mischievous Weimaraner Maisie.

Poetry of the People – Ashley Crout

This week's poet of the people is Ashley Crout. I met Ashley a few months ago and since then I have heard her do readings and had lunch with her and another friend. It is like we have known each other for years. 

You can hear her this Wednesday at Mind Gravy. 04/10 - 7 pm Cool Beans.

Bio

Ashley Crout was born in Charleston, SC, and graduated from Bard College and the MFA program at Hunter College. She is the recipient of a poetry grant from The Astraea Foundation, has received awards from The Academy of American Poets and the Poetry Foundation and is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has been published in Michigan Quarterly Review, New Orleans Review, Atticus Review and Dodging the Rain, among others. She lives in Greenville, SC, with her hound, Stella.

CLOSED ADOPTION

All I knew of my birth mother then
was the fierce red color of her hair
that burned away any usual humanness,
her build still slight with youth
and her love of the horses she rode
across the mind of my childhood.
I filled my room with horse figurines
so that we would have something shared
between us when she came one day
to find me. But sometimes what is missing,
does not know how to return. You find
yourself seeking the safety of certain devotion
such as the loyalty of vaguely human horses
like the ones in westerns who know how
to head home if ever they are separated
from their cowboy in the course of the story.
I cannot end this with even a brief singular nod
of acknowledgement. I saw her once
decades too late, the woman who carried my life
until it could be separated from hers.
I recognized her the way I know myself
in the mirror. She moved as I moved. Her face
was trapped in my face. I would not let her out.
I had never resembled anyone. You would think
it would have connected us. I was once
brand new in the world. I needed her then
is what I said during our single intersection.
She had no language for how she heard this,
did not respond. I considered being devastated,
then I decided to take my life back.
I pictured all my horses restless in the barn,
alerting me to a dangerous presence, a coming
storm indifferent to my safety, my survival,
the interdependent structures of my house.
You’ve grown old, I might say. I will outlive you.

SONNET IN A TIME OF CONTAGION

A slant rain deadens the night-dark highway.
There’s something I’m trying to leave behind.
In some yesterday, a new disease came.
You now must hold yourself still in stopped time,
 
stand at a remove from the living world—
seen but unheard, your voice hushed by distance.
Skin on skin touch forbidden, that’s the curse.
You could be coated with it. That’s the dance.
 
You could look like yourself but carry it,
sicken someone, accidental murder.
You could hate it but find you’ve married it.
This has happened before. It grows further.
 
I mean your death could stand right next to you
and you wouldn’t know it. You wouldn’t move.

WOMAN WHO SAID $37 MILLION JACKPOT WIN HAD RUINED HER LIFE FOUND DEAD IN HER HOME

And so it seems you cannot buy your way out of lonely.
 
How many years did she string her
luckiest numbers together looking
to match the winning sequence
before the unlikely day that she did.
 
She had not meant an avalanche of dollars
but the people she believed they would draw
towards her. She had never before been special
to anyone. She had outlived an entire line
of women who aged unwitnessed, unmentioned
by any voice in any room.
 
Some tragedies are about what does not happen.
 
Maybe she sat in her usual house, and the money
overwhelmed her with its possibles, its faces
of former rulers as immovable as the dead become.
Maybe she waited for the townsfolk to begin
to swarm their singular greeding hive mind
at her property’s edge. She dreamed of crowds
that at once would know her, at once would love her
if only they all drew together imitating an embrace.
 
There is no account of the how it had,
as she is said to have said, left her life a ruin.
Maybe it could never have been enough
for the madness of hands sticky with want
that surrounded her mother’s mother’s house
and outstretched their temporary mouths
revealing the entire top rows of their teeth.
 
Maybe all those who beamed at her briefly,
just polite enough to make their faces grateful,
bought garish gleaming boats and sailed away.
Maybe she felt smaller then as if seen
from a distance until she was almost an absence
like the failure of light outside her windows.
Even her body left her alone in her sleep.
 
Authorities found her days too late – unable
to separate what once she was, a physical house
abandoned, from the thin sheet she’d drawn to her
as one does when desperate for the necessity
of touch. Maybe, in her wealth of grief, she submitted
to sleep so fully, its shutdown of conscious
calculated wants, that it kept her body in such
a stillness that it never moved again. Maybe
she lost all knowledge of how to lift herself out
 
again into the gold sun, the sight of its glare
like coins placed on the eyes of the dead.

LAND DWELLLERS

When you are inhabited by a geography, its waters –
the animal scent of the marsh, the brine-soak
of the ocean – rise into your mouth. You swallow.
 
You are never not swallowing. Its land hums under
your feet. You cannot place the song. Its land loosens
into silt. The rust red dust sinks, is sinking, until it settles
 
on the flat of your diaphragm. To breathe, you have to
lift entire cities as if holding an offering up to God, excavate
your body from the roots of the family that named you.
 
You never had their thick drawl in your mouth, how it
stretches every word backwards into a story that glories
the past. Your mother and your mother’s mother could
 
have been someone but they only sat watching the world.
Slatted rocking chairs cast them forward then back
then back. The slowed sound of their language lingers,
 
like the crushed lavender scent at their necks, long
after it means whatever it meant. Your chest is resonant
with human voice. You are both the house and the one
 
locked out, your flushed face cooling against the windows.
One day you will run. One day you will run back
for the same reasons that you left. You are populated
 
both with those whose sins are unforgivable and those
who prophet a God to them. Every one of them, every last
one of them, is yours. Every goddamn one of them is you.

Poetry of the People: Ed Madden

This week's Poet of the People is Ed Madden, Ed Madden is a gifted poet and a generous mentor and nurturer across a wide range of our community of poets. He consistently models how to be relevant and present in both the town and gown communities and we are richer for it.

Ed will be reading Sunday at Poetry Church and Tuesday at Historic Columbia 

From Ark (Sibling Rivalry, 2016)

Ark
Christmas 1966

The small box is filled with little beasts—
a barn that’s a barge, a boat—the ark’s

ridged sides like boards, a plastic plank,
a deck that drops in fitted slots, but lifted

reveals that zoo of twos—heaped beasts
to be released beneath a glittering tree,

its dove-clipped limbs. Dad’s asleep
in his reclining seat, and crumpled waves

of paper recede as Mom circles the room.
The humming wheel throws light across the walls.

How to lift him

Don’t pick him up by the pits,
which seems easiest. You risk

broken bones, bruised skin.
Instead, once he’s eased up, sits,

shoulders hunched, fee slung
over the edge, lean down for the hug, 

your arms under his and around,
hands flat against his back, his arms around

you. This is what you do. Then lift him,
his feet between yours, this timid

dance around, this turn. Tell him
to bend his knees as you ease him

down to the chair, its wheels locked,
set him in slow. Kneel in front

as if to receive his blessing.

Lift each foot to its rest. Wrap
a blanket around him—you’re going out.

Stop at the old flat-front desk,
last hiding place for his cigarettes— 

why he wanted up, after all. Stop
at the edge of the porch and lock

the wheels. Make sure he’s in the sun.
Stand silent by, he won’t talk much,

though the lonely cat will,
rubbing its back against the wheels.

Thirst

The nurse said, your father really looks at you
when you walk into the room—

he stares at you,
she said, he must have something to tell you.

But he never tells you.

Later, another hospice worker listened to this story.
She said, no, you know,

sometimes, as we’re leaving this world,
our world contracts to the small space of the room,

to the few things we love.

Your father wasn’t looking at you because he had
something to tell you, no,

he was looking at you because he loved you, she said.
It was near the end, she said,

he was drinking you in.

Poems from A Pooka in Arkansas (Word Works, 2023)

[untitled]

What has been omitted
from the history we learned?
The stubble was plowed under,
sometimes burned.

[untitled]

Sometimes when it’s cold out,
I pull on my dad’s old denim
shirt, warm, worn, the past
a thin jacket, what I have left.

Psalm
after Psalm 23

Tim is my therapist;
I’m learning to trust him.
He motions me to the green sofa;
there’s always bottled water on the table.
He leads me to talk about things
I don’t want to talk about.
If I make my way to the top
of the dark stairs,
he makes a space for talking
and for not talking.
Sometimes the room gets crowded—
my dead father, my distant mother,
all those messages from my brother
I can pull up right there on my phone.
In their presence, he asks,
“What would happen
if you stopped doing your family’s work
of shaming you?”
That question follows me the rest of the day.

From A Story of the City: Poems Occasional and Otherwise (Muddy Ford, 2023)

Postcard: First Baptist Church, Columbia, S.C.
Justitia Virtutum Regina, motto of the City of Columbia

This is where they decided
to divide US, where they said
all men are not equal, where
they pledged allegiance to
the divided states of America
and to the secession for
which they stood, a nation
broken, divisible, with liberty
and justice for some.

Something to declare
July 11, 2018, after William Stafford

The president is overseas this week, that’s the news,
and we’re reading William Stafford in a chilly classroom
and trying to write about where we live now, and how.

Important people are gathered around a big table,
but we sit at our little desks. Sachi talks about what it means
to declare something when you cross a border.

Back home, I know my cat is dying. She’ll amble
stiffly to the door when I return, her blind eyes
wide and bright with what she cannot see.

They say that history is going on somewhere.
Zoe describes her story as a scrap of paper swept
by the wind, litter snagged in a tree.

This is only a little report from a summer arts camp,
where Makenna and Maya and Eva and Micah are writing
about their small, rich lives. We’re here. You can find us here.

A new year

Bert’s outside taking down the strings
of lights, this winter sun bright enough
for a new day, new year. Colleen sent
a thick heart made of seeds—we’ll hang it
in a tree today for birds, for the winter
that persists despite the sun. Last night’s
firewords were gorgeous, though Barry ran back
and forth with his torch to relight them—
the way, sometimes, we have to do for
our little resolutions, for our glorious
dreams, for our tired hearts, when it’s
dark, when it’s still so cold.

UNPUBLISHED POEMS

Epithalamium, backyard wedding
for Mahayla, 20 June 2020

Bert mowed the yard and we spent
some time tidying up, though I know
after next week’s storms there will be
more to do, before the weekend, before
your wedding, before the small service
you asked to have in our backyard.
The mockingbird who takes up a post
every day on the utility pole will sing
for you I’m sure, and I’m certain too
he’ll work in his latest riff, his perfect
soft mimicry of a car alarm going off
in the distance. I will get the words
ready. I’m sorry there’s a big hole
in the yard where we hope to put in
a pond later this summer. But maybe
that’s okay. We’re always trying to make
things better and sometimes that means
a big muddy hole in the middle of it all,
sometimes that means a simple service
in your uncles’ back yard, everyone
standing apart, except for the bride
and groom, maybe your mom and stepdad.
Nathan got the day off, despite the police
being on call right now. I hope he stays
safe this week, his dark skin, his uniform
and gun. I hope I get the words right.
I know you’d hoped for something lovelier,
that wedding in the mountains in October,
but maybe this is best, we don’t know
what things will be like then. May it be
clear and sunny on the day, may the
magnolia still be wearing its perfume, may
the yard be good enough, may this be good
enough. I will ask him to take your hand.
I will ask if you have a ring. I will ask
you to repeat after me. You said no
prayer because Nathan is not Christian,
but I may offer up a prayer anyway.
Maybe this is that prayer.

 

Poetry of the People: Catherine Zickgraf

This week's Poet of the People is Catherine Zickgraf. Catherine, aka Catherine the Great is a mother hen of poets of all ages, educational backgrounds and genres and is a force in South Carolina and Georgia that reverberates throughout the spoken word and written poetry community. If you don't know her you have resided too long in your little office listening to your own voice or parrots who sound a lot like you.. I am honored to call her friend.


Two lifetimes ago, Catherine Zickgraf performed her poetry in Madrid. Now her main jobs are to write and hang out with her family. Her work has appeared in Pank, Deep Water Literary Journal, and The Grief Diaries. Her chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published through Kelsay Books.

 Find her on twitter @czickgraf. Watch/read more at www.caththegreat.blogspot.com


Poem to Lost Poems

 

At the riverbank, she writes

while her letters stretch wings,

slip wind, skim away.

 

So she shelters her words,

nails wood without hinges to the floor, 

singes the threshold and corners.

 

Groundwater carves the chalk rock.

She’s learning to find the darkness

in the humid chill of earth’s stone web,

in moss-floored pools that shadow-shift

with a breath of candlelight.

 

Still the arch outside connects the riversides,

brides of the rapids flow home to sea

with the surfaced words of she who

sees now with mind, not eyes. 

 

Where rivers scoop lakes at their estuaries,

a marble she holds encases the oceans. 

Seeking the self inside,

she polishes the sky’s eye.

Pulling rope up the riverside,

she swings into the long line of horizon.

 

 Yasou! A Celebration of Life, July 2020

 

  

In the Dilation of Eye

 

We chilled for three days.

But when you started staring

out my back windows into the woods,

I knew I had to return you to the wild.

 

You have eyes that can mirror earth or sky,

that hide in your environment.

You are oak leaf and grass, aqua and azure.

 

Take me with you.

Let me swim in your iris

and the well of your pupil

toward horizons and the trees.

 

 Vita Brevis, August 2020

 

Saving a winged animal 

that gets lured in by the porch light

requires at least three human hands:

mine to catch/seal creature from escape

and my helper’s to kill lights/open door

so I can release it into the night. 

 

It’s always been my job to rescue

beings that don’t belong inside

(unless its slithery, bitey, or stingy).

The cats help by gently delivering

me tiny, living lime-green lizards— 

so mostly all these complex little

things get returned to roam the earth. 

 

 Savannah Dusk

  

Now is the hour

when cypress trees dim into shadows.

 

The river is lingering along the bank

in puddles caught among braided roots.

Ageless sky deepens, wavelets go still,

the water seems to slow and fall silent.

 

This is the ceremony of sinking dusk—

when our reflections turn dark and

dim blues fade in the calmness of night. 


 Goodnight

 

Kira and I decided one evening before I had to go in

and get a bath that after bedtime we would call

 

out our windows to each other from across the alley.

First grade, I was still crazy awake when they’d

 

tuck me in, the sky so full of daylight. But having her

to talk to at night would be like double-dutching the

 

telephone lines that crossed the canyon between

our streets—I’d never be bored again. Yet from my

 

row of homes in my treehouse bedroom two and

a half stories up, the only word I heard was goodnight.

 

 Neuro Logical, January 2021

 

Somnambulant                                                                     

When they sleep down deep at night,

she tunnels out the powder room window     

into drizzle and mist, hops fence.  

 

She kicks through currents along the curb,                            

crosses street, descends the bank

toward the creek’s down-streaming sounds. 

 

Twelve and barefoot all summer,

she’s unafraid of treading the pebble beds,

leaps cold rocks to boulders,

splashing the stars of the water.

 

Breeze moves through the woods,

the moon-lattice shifts around her.

 

Though curtained with night and still invisible,

she slips back in through the bathroom window—

almost ready come pain of day

when they’ve opened wide their eyes.    

 

                                                                                                                                                                                             

Overnight

Into my window fall stars long as dreams, I slip through the screen.

Night grows a poem stretching prima toes to cross street then creek

stepping soft on the forest floor. Over shivering beds of dark stones,

the sparkle-moon follows me home.

 

Even through moon and drizzle, the train plumes billowing into the

clouds navigate my backyard valley. They vibrate my candle flame

until its last breath sifts out the window, when whistles trail off and

tracks flow into the starlight horizon.      

 

The pines don’t drip with shadows behind our house, out of reach

of the streetlight. Past the creek line bordering our woods, the oak

leaves close their eyes. The creatures of the low sky hush us calm, 

I’m returning my mind to its dream.

 

 Origami Poems Project, April 2020

 

Minimal

 

In the fullness of summer, mowers decapitate green necks

            of dandelions and red clover,

            slicing their flowers between matted blades. 

 

We stop gashing our lawn as it’s shocked with October frost.

            When the winter wind spreads arms down the valley,

            my garden zinnias turn to death and skeletalize. 

 

On the back porch tonight, I reach through the atmosphere,  

            lengthening glowing arms into space. I ease the moon

            from its netted cradle, an egg nested in my palm.

 

I am minimal, though, under the sky’s dark quilt.

            I’m a speck in the weeds of my acre yard

            on a tiny rock rounding its ancient orbit.  

 

 

Visitant, October 2017

 

Poetry of the People with Kimberly Simms Gibbs

This week's Poet of the People is Kimberly Simms Gibbs. She is South Carolina upcountry poetry. She sees with an eye of southern cornbread sopped in pork drippings gravy. If you want to feel the Carolina hills and mountains read Kimberly Simms Gibbs.

Kimberly's literary voice is rooted in the Southern tradition of storytelling. Her passion for poetry from both the page to the stage has led Kimberly to garner titles such as former Carl Sandburg NHS Writer-in-residence, National Poetry Slam ‘Legend of the South’, TedX speaker, co-founder of CarolinaPoets, former Southern Fried Poetry Slam Champion, and award-winning teaching artist. In her first full-length collection from Finishing Line Press, Lindy Lee: Songs on Mill Hill, Kimberly chronicles the lives of textile workers in the Carolinas with historical accuracy and imaginative insight. Ron Rash, the award-winning author of Serena, says about Kimberly: "she writes with eloquence and empathy about an important part of Southern history - too often neglected."


                                  Trespassing after the Hysterectomy 

The Lily-of-the-Valley 

           pearly bells tremble 

            the way a child’s mouth brims 

                                   with laughter. 

Daffodils 

          headless green arms gesture 

          split-hearts subterranean 

                                leaves blackened. 

Mole, 

          how sweet is your tongue 

           after your feast of bitter 

                                 tulip daughters? 

Dark earth, 

           how do you embrace the emptiness 

            of your bloomless womb 

                                  your crumbling tubers? 

Lady Slipper, 

           my gloved hands long to plant 

            while your tendrils more exotic 

            unfurl sharp leaves, pregnant blossom 

                                   beneath the last living hemlock.  

                                                  Homestead 

                                 But nothing is solid and permanent. 

                       Our lives are raised on the shakiest foundations. 

                                   – Ron Rash, One Foot in Eden 

A bolt of barbed wire, black with age,

hints the way, jutting from the undergrowth 

like a wizened digit— the post long since decayed 

and lost to the crumbling host of litter. 

This sunken corner is a garbled message 

till we catch a tree pierced with another barb. 

A stone pile murmurs, entangled with the metal. 

This forest expands in every direction. 

Our eyes can see no horizon beyond it. 

Mountains surge as we weave 

up and down valleys, creeks, and ravines. 

Eighty years: a forest has fallen and regrown. 

Homestead cleared, tilled, planted, harvested 

then reclaimed by this hummocked beast. 

We follow the ancient line back to a single 

hearthstone and the outline of a foundation. 

A toppled stone wall, a brown bottle. 

All around us: a forgotten fence, an outpost of the past.

Wild Green Soup

          Newberry Cotton Mill Village

           South Carolina 1924  


Fingers of frost stretch across the windows.

Seasoned wood crackles in the wood stove

while I stir the last salty pork knuckle

with a handful of beans, wild greens

into a stock pot just off the boil.

Fall's harvest now a collection of empty jars;

the cupboards breath -- dust, dead moths.

Each stir is more a wish as the day considers

getting warm, sweet herbs summon cravings.

Morning casts its pink sap over frost-risen clay

as I shepherd this thinly-feathered brood

towards the cotton-strewn spinning room.

Today we will piece broken strings, weave

cotton scraps to make them something whole.

Liddy Lee Songs on Mill Hill (Finishing Line Press, 2017)

       Machine Tool Salesman

Bill run that grinder fo ten years

Machine bigger than a brown bear

in Manny's stretched machine shop

in the flats of South Carolina.

The metallic cold milled slack snow

big sloppy flakes. The guys put on

their coats and stuck out their tongues

for the rare southern crystals.

Scraping together snowball heaps,

they watched the yard go dark and drank

black coffee. They stomped their feet

and left their coats on cause the shop

was so cold. That year so metallic.

That's how it happened, the coat.

Bill knew better, but ten years

you get so easy. The machine caught

him-- metal grinding machine --instant.

I sold them that grindernew.

Just horrible, he had two little babies too.

Took a week to get him out of the wheel

but it still ran. Can't keep a machine

something like that happens. I sold

it down the coast. Just horrible, two little

babies too and that year so metallic cold.

                                                     Summer Swagger

Late August, we are still free summer children.

We run over the rocky banks laughing in some

chase game; muscles flex, tense, stretch, climb

the steep --- dig fingers into cracks, wrench ourselves up.

Mountain expanse of water calls to us. My skin

tingles with nervousness as I look down thirty feet.

"Take my hand," you tender, "We'll jump together."

Wind races around my feet! We send out seagull wails,

steal breath for the plunge. My body is a scream!

Down, down forever in bubbles, then buoyant, silent,

We are carp pulling ourselves up through the water.

We burst back into heat, hollowing out triumphant bellows.

Poetry of the People with Loli Molina Munoz

This week's Poet of the People is Loli Molina Munoz. Loli openly shares her otherliness and in the sharing becomes one of us.  Diaspora of a Spanish Tortilla (Recipe and Poem); is exquisitely simple in telling complex emotions.

IT’S THANKSGIVING AND I AM NOT AMERICAN

It’s Thanksgiving and I’m not American.

I have cooked turkey, mashed potatoes, 
collard greens, cranberry sauce, and stuffing. 

My husband has dressed up the house
with fall colors and he is not American. 

A friend has come to share this rainy
day and he is not American.

The dog is staring at us hoping to
get some table food and he is not American.

We have toasted and remembered some
old friends who are not American. 

We are thankful for having each other 
and we are not American. 

I HAVE AN ACCENT

I have an accent

When I go to the grocery store
and they ask me if I found everything I needed 
I answer “yes”
they say: you have an accent!

This accent is my grandmother’s sewing for the rich 
and waiting from my grandfather to return from Venezuela.

When I order a tall decaf coffee with milk 
and I spell my name
they say: you have an accent!

This accent is my mother’s cleaning houses
so I could fly abroad and improve my English.

When I read a poem 
and your faces change trying to understand 
what I say and 
you think: she has an accent!

This accent is their braided hands delivering the fruit
that I will place in your still empty basket. 

THE GOOD DISHES

“But they are grounded
in their God and their families 
they are grounded in their hearts and minds.”
-Nikki Giovanni

my mother keeps the
good dishes in an old
cabinet after fifty 

years hoping I have 
them someday, she also 
holds onto a coffee 

set and a quilt she
made before she got 
married, your dowry

she says while she shows 
one of her few smiles 
buried in a deep wide


hole digged by my father
covered with her dreams
and my nightmares

long lasting nightmares
my mother possesses 
the first and the last 

of my days, the 
first and the last of
my nights, the fist 

and the last of 
my 
thoughts. 

ON ALL SAINTS DAY

Don’t leave me.

Those were your last
words. 

And we left you.

We closed the door
and we went home. 

Your eyes were begging for more 
time with us, more time alive.

But we left you
abuela Lola.

And the morning after
you were gone.

And the memories became 
a attempt to order the chaos.

My chaos. 

Diaspora of a Spanish Tortilla

(Recipe and poem)

I
Ingredients for 4 people
2 cups of Spanish extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons of Spanish extra-virgin olive oil
1 pound of potatoes
6 eggs
Salt

II
My mothers tells me it’s time to go to bed before the Three Wise Men come with the presents. I have to cook the tortilla for them, she says, and I think it’s not fair I don’t get to taste the mixture before being cooked. I close my eyes and I think about the smell of the potatoes and the eggs before jumping into the pan. 

III
Heat 2 cups of olive oil in a medium pan, slowly fry the potatoes until beautiful golden brown. Drain the potatoes on a paper towel. 

IV
It’s 1997 and I am an exchange student in Coventry, England. The first week someone organizes a party at our house. I don’t remember who. It wasn’t me. Everyone brings something for their countries. I cooked tortilla the same way my mother taught me. We eat, we drink, and we sing songs that we all know. 

V
Beat the eggs in a bowl with 1 teaspoon of salt. Add the cooked potatoes to the beaten eggs and let stir for 1 minute. 

VI
Last night I went early to bed as my mother told me and this morning Melchior came home with a present for me. It was the doll I wanted. Her tortilla must have been really good this year. 

VII
Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a 6-inch pan over high heat. Once the oil is hot, pour the egg-potato mixture and reduce the heat to low. 

VIII
Last week I cooked a tortilla for lunch and he smiled when he saw it. This is so good, he said. You are even better, I thought. 

IX
Once it begins to set and the edges turn golden brown, place a plate over the pan and flip the pan and the plate so the tortilla ends up on the plate, uncooked side down. 

X
Wisconsin was cold, too cold for a Southern Spaniard used to the sun and the scent of the Mediterranean. Someone asked me to make a tortilla but this time it didn’t flip right. I had to go back to Spain. 

XI
Once the tortilla set, flip the tortilla again and transfer to a platter. Season with salt and cut into wedges to serve.

XII
In 2006 my mother confessed that she never cooked tortilla for the Three Wise Men. I was so disappointed that I cried. I was 32. I was 32 and I cried. And I never stopped making tortillas. 

 Bio

Loli Molina Muñoz is a Spanish teacher in Lexington, SC, with a Phd in Modern Languages. Her poetry has appeared in different Spanish and American publications and anthologies like VoZes, Label Me Latin and Jasper Fall Lines. In 2019, she published an essay on gender and sex identity in feminist science fiction as part of an anthology called Infiltradas. This anthology was awarded as Best Essays Anthology by the Spanish Science Fiction Society Awards in 2020.

Poetry of the People with Amy Drennan

This week's Poet of the People is Amy Drennan. To meet Amy is to walk into bright sunshine. She is Charleston's house mother of lost poets. She is a gifted writer and poet who feeds and houses poets who need a safe place to land and sacrifices her opportunity to shine to promote others. She is a gift and a treasure and my friend.

Amy Drennan was born and raised in Los Angeles CA. As a reluctant military spouse, she’s lived all over the states, and now calls Charleston SC, her permanent home. She is an advertising executive, an above-average wife, and mom to several exceptional humans, a scraggly dog, and anyone who finds themselves in need of some love. She enjoys writing, as her Irish heritage has rendered her impervious to traditional forms of therapy.

If You’d Tried 

It’s ok.

I’m a bit much.

Not everyone likes a woman

with a gap in her teeth

who cries

a lot.

 

Some can’t handle a bunch of words,

being fed all the time.

Some prefer hungry.

 

I’d just tell you

you’re beautiful every day.

You wouldn’t want to hear it,

couldn’t bear it,

already know and don’t need it.

Maybe you don’t have needs.

 

You may not like your name

when I say it.

I’ve whispered your name

into a few mouths.

Some don’t care for whispering.

Some don’t like their mouths.

 

There’s peach fuzz

at the base of my back.

It’s ok to dislike peaches

and my back.

The way I’d curl it into you.

The way I’d arch it in your honor.

Some prefer the front,

like to see what they’re dealing with.

 

I’d love you so softly,

so loudly,

you’d be sick of it by now.

 

Maybe heat isn’t your thing.

You’ve been burned,

had your fingertips singed off.

You don’t touch anything warm now,

you promised.

 

I have freckles on my freckles.

Maybe you don’t like freckles.

Maybe you’d learn to love them.

I’d have shaved my legs for you,

if you’d told me you were coming.

 

Do you like women in bathtubs?

What if they stay there

till sunrise,

writing and not sleeping,

writing about not sleeping?

Would you like to not sleep with me?

 

You wrote your number for me

on a notepad, a matchbook,

the back of my hand.

I didn’t keep it, it kept me.

 

I’m calling you from up North,

down South,

out East.

Somewhere you’ve never been,

have always wanted to go.

 

You might think I’m a firefly, a star,

Christmas lights in June.

From this distance there’s no telling.

 

We could be night sky.

Two blinks to navigate by.

Point A and point me.

The shortest distance between us,

a wish.

We could’ve found each other

if you’d tried.

 

 Kissing a man without lips

 

Last night I dreamt a tiny tooth

broken on your boyhood gums

sunk into the flesh

of my cellulite thigh,

my stretch marked hip,

my salt lick neck,

my all I have is yours,

if you’d like it.

 

The first time you planted in me

up came everything hardy,

hungry,

difficult to kill.

 

It’s peach season in the south.

You can travel there

without leaving the West.

You can wipe sticky sweet

from your chin,

eat till your belly hurts,

till Summer is an abomination.

 

I am a fire you set.

A sun plucked from its sky,

made brighter for shining

in dark places.

 

My memory is thick and unforgiving,

but yesterday you is forgotten.

I can’t recall you before you now.

Punch drink me,

and you a punch pourer.

 

A lover of your own reflection.

I make an awfully good mirror.

 

 What I will tell your daughter

who is old enough to ask

 

Your dad was maddening

and he was loved

 

He held his ear

to a glass

held the glass

to my chest

he listened

he listened harder than anyone

 

He heard pins drop

secrets spill

belly aches and butterflies

 

He heard pieces break

the push-pull

of stitching back together

 

He washed my hair once

I didn’t ask

but he heard me

always listening

 

He had the softest spots

the brokenest bits

he thought himself ugly

but he cried like music

when he cried

he was the bluest

most beautiful boy

 

 Not sorry

 

You are sorry not sorry

‘bout the fire you’ve become.

 

By the time you read this,

I’ll have flown the coop.

By the time you see this,

I’ll be blue eye disappeared.

 

I loved more

than either wing,

gave up flight for you,

stopped singing.

 

Each leaf I know

has turned color

and dropped.

Every leave I know

has left.

 

I’ve gone gone before.

Old news,

fresh ink,

ablaze in the end.

 

I wove you a bed

you’d never need,

stepped lightly over,

apologized never.

 

Don’t deliver the news of our deaths

 

Repeat after me.

We are ok.

It’s all ok.

 

We can breathe

don’t need to breathe

to be here. 

 

We don’t die,

we make room.

 

We are enough light

to fill a teacup,

a sky,

a memory full of here

and gone again.

 

Bushels of babies are born

while grievers grieve.

 

If we hold our ears

to them,

lay hands,

we can hear the whole ocean,

feel what made way.

 

We wish us

Hallelujah

each time we walk

through a door.

 

We wish us

a soft touch

a gentle goodbye

when it’s time.

Poetry of the People with Bentz Kirby

This week's Poet of the People is local arts activist and icon, Bentz Kirby. His poetry utilizes self-examination with a dose of grace and humility and we are better for it.  Unafraid to grow, he will soon add MFA to his long list of accomplishments.

Bio: Bentz Kirby lives in the Rosewood area of Columbia, South Carolina. Educated first as a social worker and later a lawyer, he has been writing poetry since around 1969.  A survivor of a Sudden Cardiac Arrest, he is a big fan of Automated External Defibrillators. Other than enjoying life with his wife, May, their children and a brood of pets, he writes and performs music with his friends.

Failures


Failures from the past should
hold no sway in the
arena where missteps accrue.
Imagining us seated on a pew
with worshipers at Mass
or in a strict teacher’s class.
Chalise contains toxic brew,
without a promised breakthrough.
Behavior clings, bound fast
to patterns and fate cast by trauma.
Days of queued rolling rocks.
Absurd hero, false faces,
ingrained strife, prevents
pursuit of life.
These failures slice like the dull knife, or
live birth without midwife.

Infrastructure


Trauma creates defensive strategies to
Escape pain, unwelcome memories.
Strategies create mechanisms to layer
Protection on the frightened child
By forgetting unwelcome memories.
Eventually, coping mechanisms construct
An infrastructure to protect this child,
And for a while,
It works.


Eventually the child matures, but not
Beyond the fear.
This infrastructure becomes a jail,
Protection becomes an impediment
To the adult.


Yesterday resides within internal infrastructure,
Prohibiting today’s garden from growing
Unless the child can dismantle coping devices
Creating space for all desires — to blossom.

Ritual for Submission


I submit the following,
this mechanical world consumes all to
ensure your capitulation.
 
Stop, pause, listen to the magic,
whether you believe or not. Give thanks — grass, flower,
bee, hummingbird observe your response.
 
Faeries dance among stones on hillsides while you
believe in Santa Claus, but disbelieve in faeries.
Mushrooms, birds, dogs, and cats who
 
speak in the forgotten language.
Pretending you are not blind and
accommodating the unholy
 
calling you to obscure this one true language
we should hear. Religion assimilates imprinted rituals,
leaving you forever forgetting all you know.
 
until we no longer listen to the trees and
mushrooms who speak the one true language.

Theia
 
Sounds welled above labyrinth, breaking glass
Startled us, awaiting in the womb
Secured by fairies, like us, once chained,
By stunted hollow disbelief, a construct
Of Gaia, Uranus, twelve Titians and magic --
Dawn, sun, moon, gold, shining glass reveal Theia.
 
Blue-sky, wide-shining, fails to dim Theia,
She who reigns over silver, gems and glass.
Giving sight to those who seek her magic.
Eos, Helios, Selene from her womb
Reveal Titans blueprints for their construct
Obscured by disbelief and those in chains,
 
Blinded from birth and accepting our chains
Denying the glowing face of Theia.
Men attempt to create their doomed construct,
Science built to shatter myths into glass.
Umbilical torn, scattered from the womb
Blasphemers scoffing, denying real magic.
 
We obscure life, magicians lack alchemical magic,
Crafting spells while the abyss creates our chains.
Expunging knowledge existing before the womb.
We forget the Titans and gifts born by Theia,
Appropriating mirror images, breaking glass
Allowing illusions to replace the construct.
 
Illusion births illusion, we create false constructs,
Deluded generations deny unerring magic
Creating sight through a murky glass.
Leaden mental deception, conceals our chains
Restraining our eyes from perceiving Theia’s
Previous prophecies embedded within her womb.
 
Dawn, Sun, moon, children sprung forth from womb,
Light beams reveal destiny and unavoidable constructs.
Radiant intrinsic value issues forth from Theia.
Mortal men observe such light as magic

Believing removes obstructions, we are unchained,
Heroes see face to face beyond dark glass.
 
From this womb proceeds what we call magic,
From beyond this construct we are in fact unchained,
From Goddess Theia all light illuminates through glass.